#Top Indian former leader in Uttar pradesh

[bbpsnoida]

INVESTITURE CEREMONY

Bal Bharati Public School, Noida, celebrated the Investiture Ceremony on 8 May 2023. The event was graced by Shri MJ Akbar, Honorable Member of The Rajya Sabha and Former Minister of State for External Affairs of India. The profound lighting of the lamp ceremony set the tone for the day’s proceedings. After the floral felicitations of our illustrious Chief Guest, the Principal, Mrs. Asha Prabhakar, welcomed the august gathering comprising dignitaries, parents, and students to witness the sombre occasion.

The school choir swept the audience along to the mellifluous notes of “Augrodoot” — a Rabindranath Tagore composition where he welcomes the young hearts to be the emissaries of the fearless since being valorous is the need of the hour. The soul-stirring musical sojourn instilled a sense of determination in the hearts of the young leaders. Thereafter, the investiture ceremony commenced in earnest wherein the young leaders from the Primary, the Senior, and the Senior Secondary stepped forward to take charge. The Chief Guest and the Principal pinned badges and placed sashes on the Supreme Council members, the Primary school leaders, the House Captains, and the various Club in-charges. The crowning moment of the day came with the felicitation of the Senior School student council members. A speaker par excellence, Aarya Singh Bhadouriya took the mantle of the school’s president. Jiya Kapoor, topper of the Commerce Section, has been chosen as the Vice President. Anirudh Acharya, a consistent Scholar Badge awardee, wore the sash of the Head Boy and Gauri Gupta, an accomplished danseuse, claimed the post of Head Girl for the academic session 2024–25. After the students were sworn in for their respective posts, they took a pledge to uphold the integrity and the best interest of their institution in all that they participate in for the session.

Thereafter, the school’s Annual Journal was released by the Chief Guest, Shri MJ Akbar, the Principal, Ms. Asha Prabhakar, and the Editorial team comprising Ms. Rachna Sondhi (Editor) and Ms. Kamna Joshi (Co-editor).

The Chief Guest, Shri MJ Akbar, addressed the audience, highlighting the hidden depths of Indianness and how children must be made aware of our past struggles and the impact that Gandhiji had on the tumultuous times when India struggled to be free. He praised the esteemed institution, one of the best schools in Noida, for staging such a grand event. He stated that the future of the nation can be seen in the eyes of the students.

After such an inspirational address by the Chief Guest, it was time for a much-awaited, power-packed dance rendition, Shivanukriti, by the senior schoolgirls. The sheer impact of the indomitable Shiva Shakti was such that everyone was left spellbound by the dramatic aura surrounding the performance. With great zeal and promise, the day ended with an aspirational vision for the young leaders to lead from the front and ensure good governance and fair play on the school campus.

Bal Bharati Public School, Noida, renowned as the best school in Noida, is also recognized among the top 10 CBSE schools in Noida. Its state-of-the-art facilities and commitment to excellence make it one of the best CBSE schools in Noida and the best school in Uttar Pradesh. This school boasts some of the best infrastructure in Noida, providing students with an environment conducive to holistic development and academic excellence.

[ptshekradixit]

Top Indian former leader in Uttar pradesh- Pt Shekhar Dixit

Pt.Shekhar Dixit is a  Top Indian former leader in Uttar pradesh, formar union leader and president of Rastriya Kisan Manch. He is known as kisan sewa neta, brahman leader, young politician and youth leader in uttar pradesh. Pt. Shekhar Dixit is a young farmer leader,social worker and president of Rashtriya Kisan Manch.From the age of 17, Pt. Shekhar Dixit started raising awareness about environmental problems and bringing forest tribal issues intomainstream debate.From the age of 7, Pt. ShekharDixit started raising awareness about environmental problems and bringing forest tribal issues into mainstream debate. In 2002, he visited the easterndistricts of Uttar Pradesh and the villages of Seemanchal in Bihar with the then Union Minister Alauddin Khan.

[indianpolsoc]

FC Barcelona and the Indian National Congress: The uncanny resemblance

The following is a piece by Anunay Chowdhury. Anunay is a second-year student of Law at King’s College London. 

Perhaps this is the strangest analogy that you would read today. FC Barcelona and Indian National Congress do not have any substantial similarity but, atypically, two of the most prominent organizations in their respective fields have much more in common than one would expect. The exit of a brilliant Brazilian player, Neymar in 2015 made Barcelona vulnerable and has been witnessing some of the most embarrassing moments in the club’s modern history. On the other side, the Indian National Congress is barely keeping up in the wake of Bhartiya Janta Party’s dominance in the national scene. A closer look at two organizations, who operate in two very distinct professions may reveal a similar flaw.  

The recent headlines have put the Grand Old Party on a very fragile tactical ground. After the episodes in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, Indian National Congress is trying to salvage whatever remains of its minuscule repute in the state of Rajasthan. Sachin Pilot, a next-gen leader of the Indian National Congress and has been rumoured to be in direct conflict with local state leadership. He had single-handedly helped INC win the Rajasthan state elections in 2018. In 2015, INC only won on 21 seats out 200 in Rajasthan. The number increased to 100 seats in the 2018 election. Post his absence from the state Indian National Congress meeting; he has been dishonourably relieved from his duty as the INC Rajasthan President. As a mitigating response, the party leadership has called all the MLAs to gather in a fancy resort to contain the horse-trading from the other side – somehow the epistemology of this idea always escapes me. There were widespread rumours that Sachin Pilot was denied CMship in 2018 after the so-called resurgence of the Indian National Congress in the national scene after the near-lethal drubbing of INC after the 2014 national and state election.

The story of FC Barcelona of 2019, however coincidently, mirrors the near demise of Indian National Congress in the Indian political landscape. The FC Barcelona is the 2nd biggest club in the world by revenue - 2nd only to the national rival Real Madrid. Despite having, inarguably, the best player in the history of football, FC Barcelona has only been consistent in their dreary and insipid football. Under their former manager Pep Guardiola, FC Barcelona played one of the best football and embraced much of the identity for which they were known till date. The oozing display of possession and creativity has now decayed into relentless horizontal passing with no intent to threaten the opposing side. Almost all of their offensive movement goes through Lionel Messi, who in his day can still manage to outperform all the of the rest of the players on the field. Managers still fail to draw tactics to contain a single player in a game of 22. Lionel Messi has been, for the past two years, in a Super-Saiyan mode and has been dragging Barcelona alone. But the miracle-man still plays a team game, despite creating havoc on the field, the rules of the game remain the same – one who scores more will win. The ageing squad of FC Barcelona and dystopian management is at the core of the problem. Messi is himself 32, and he has to respect the biological limit of his body. Eight of the 20-player squad is above the age of 30. On average, 5 of the ten outfield players in a match are above the age of 30. The team does not have a classical wing player and depends on newly promoted 18-year-old Ansu Fati for occasional help. The team often seems confused and static and depend only on Lionel Messi to produce an opening for an attack. The management has spent more than 800 million pounds after the exit of the star player Neymar. Amidst the race to replace Neymar, FC Barcelona nearly killed the career of Phillipe Coutinho who joined Barcelona on the premise of winning big trophies. He has, since then, seen his former club, Liverpool FC, win everything that he was meant to win at FC Barcelona.

The ageing squad has run out of ideas, strength and passion for competing at a higher level. The manager seems reluctant to preclude ageing players due to their enormity of stature in the team. Management is disinclined to allow youth players into the first team. There seems to be a kind of hegemony of older players which undermines the managerial authority in the team selection process. Imbecilic man-management lead to expenditure on players that do not fit the requirement of the team. Barcelona is often seen succumbing to the pressure by other teams if they press high or lay deep back in defence. It only exposes off the field leadership in the hierarchy of players.

In short, Barcelona does not inspire confidence among fans, like me, that they can compete with the likes of Bayern Munich, Manchester City, Liverpool and Real Madrid. As long as they are dependent on just one man supplemented with their boring and dull tactics, lack of speed on the wings, midfielders not having freedom and creativity to anchor attacks, Barcelona is doing just everything to fall into oblivion like AC Milan and Manchester United. Fans have nothing but to sporadically orgasm on historical achievements of the club.

That surely rings a bell. The story of the Indian National Congress is the same. The recent ousting of Sachin Pilot from the Rajasthan state wing of the Indian National Congress has been linked to the weakened relations with the current Chief Minister of Rajasthan Ashok Gehlot. Some political analyst speculates that the souring relationship is due to the growing prominence of Sachin Pilot in the Rajasthan cadre of the Indian National Congress. Ashok Gehlot felt threatened due to diminishing prospect of his son growing in the ranks of the Indian National Congress in Rajasthan. Previously, Ashok Gehlot’s push to favour his son for the post of Rajasthan Cricket Association had created a concern for the local leaders of the party[1]. This is not the first time we have seen that despotic top tier party members exercise influence over the party decisions resulting in neglecting deserving candidates.

In recent times, the progression of the local leaders to the higher posts in the party has become a big concern. Much of the consternation is due to the power-hungry party veteran that does not let grassroot-workers to climb up the ladder. Former spokesperson of the party Sanjay Jha had penned the same concern in recent columns in Times of India. Instead of introspection, party discharged Sanjay Jha of his duties. He grew very critical of the lack of transparency in the internal party matters[2]. As for the matter of corroboration, he further wrote that his colleagues in the party expressed appreciation that he raised a very pertinent issue but simultaneously was left aghast by the lack of public support[3].

The leadership vacuum is another major problem. It emanates explicitly from the fact that Rahul Gandhi does not understand politics – plain and simple. Recklessness aside, BJP installed LCD TVs in the remotest of the areas in West Bengal during the Covid-19 pandemic for Amit Shah’s virtual rally for the upcoming West Bengal state elections.  As against, Rahul Gandhi uploaded a video on Facebook critiquing Modi’s policies only to realise that around 70% of the voters in the elections do not have access to Facebook. Some student in 2017 wrote to Guinness Book of World Record to enlist Rahul Gandhi as the man who lost most elections [4]. He assumed the responsibility of the President in 2017 from his mother, Sonia Gandhi. After the 2019 Lok Sabha election, as Salman Khan would choke on 21st-century film-making after watching likes of Inception, Rahul Gandhi could barely fathom the enormity of the loss. As a response, Rahul Gandhi resigned from the post of President and submitted the letter of resignation to his mother, who has since taken charge instead. Initially, Sonia Gandhi was reluctant to accept the resignation but accepted it eventually. Rahul Gandhi was projected as the Prime Ministerial candidate of the Indian National Congress. The man has not held any administrative post in his entire life and managed to lose his constituency of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh was is nearly considered to be the family heirloom of the Gandhi’s. INC won 13 out of the 15 Lok Sabha elections that were held in Amethi before 2019 Lok Sabha election. The seat has been previously held by Rahul Gandhi’s father and mother – Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. These days, the former President of the INC has been reduced to memes and a universal symbol of political comic relief. In the times of alleged historical appropriation by Bhartiya Janta Party, Rahul Gandhi can be seen invoking his great grandfather – Jawaharlal Nehru, advocating on his behalf about the magnificence of his stature and his contribution to building modern India. Rahul Gandhi is nowhere near the acclaim of Jawaharlal Nehru. If resuscitated, Nehru would prefer going back to his grave than to witness the abysmal result of his progeny.

It is not the first time that the politicians are jumping the ships but what is surprising in the case of INC is the level of leadership and how they quit. Jyotiraditya Scindia was not any other leader in the Indian National Congress. He had a firm grip on the central Madhya Pradesh constituencies and had the support of 22 MLA’s while quitting the INC. As the media outlets reported, he grew discontented by the INC leadership or lack of it. Part of leadership is to maintain a close grip on prominent regional leaders and to make sure that their efforts are reciprocated. Despite delivering, Scindia did not feel having an essential role in the Madhya Pradesh government.  

Once the beacon of freedom and liberty, the Indian National Congress is now in complete shambles and has been showing every symptom of an imminent implosion. The party has run out of ideas and lacks a democratic structure internally. All the next-gen leaders that were given an early opportunity by the INC, Like Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Milind Deora, Priya Dutt and Jitin Prasada seems to have only cemented their resolute against Sonia-Rahul hegemony over INC. The party has no one to blame but itself for its fallout with leaders like Jyotiraditya Scindia and Sachin Pilot. Rahul Gandhi is not a leader and can never be a leader, in the race of gladiators; he is merely a loony tune character.

Indian National Congress needs to revamp its internal structure to revive confidence among the party members and local party workers. The party needs a leader with inherent qualities to man-manage the party to march them forward. It is running out of time to be trying to groom and spoon feed a baby adult into believing that he is a leader. The party requires a more liberated federal structure. A fresh approach to reach masses at grassroot level is the need of the hour.  If there is any chance for INC to salvage anything before the 2023 election, the time is of the essence. In the period from 1998 till today, INC has had only two presidents irrespective of the result as against Bhartiya Janta Party has had ten presidents in the same period. While the one is a beacon of democratic liberal values and the other one is regarded as a fascist organization. The party has to look beyond the clutches of the Rahul-Sonia leadership. An apposite effort-reward equation has to be set among the party lines, so the deserving candidates have necessary means to prove their mettle. The communication divide between the so-called “High Command” has to be bridged by delegation and more transparency.

FC Barcelona presidentship is up for elections in 2021 with the leading candidate, Victor Font promising a bright project including bringing back Xavi Hernandez, one of the leading squad member of 2011 Barcelona squad and a close apprentice of Pep Guardiola, as the head coach of the team. Xavi promises to bring back the electrifying football of FC Barcelona with particular reliance on youth and academy players. It remains to be seen what Indian National Congress would do to stop leakage of prominent next-gen leaders out of the party. How congress party will approach the 2023 general election would set the tone for the ultimate future of the party.  

 [1] https://theprint.in/politics/ashok-gehlot-son-rajasthan-cricket-congress/300861/

[2] https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/sanjay-jha-removed-as-congress-spokesperson-days-after-he-penned-critical-article-against-party/story-cHG4SZysgjtHKqTt1vWouO.html

[3] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/congressmen-watching-silently-as-party-hurtles-towards-political-obsolescence/

[4] https://www.business-standard.com/article/politics/rahul-gandhi-might-make-it-to-guinness-book-for-losing-27-elections-117032100523_1.html

[xtruss]

Why White Supremacists and Hindu Nationalists are So Alike

White supremacy and Hindu nationalism have common roots going back to the 19th-century idea of the 'Aryan race'.

by Aadita Chaudhury, December 13, 2018

India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi hugs US President Donald Trump as they give joint statements in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, US, June 26, 2017

Over the last few years, especially after Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 US presidential election, we have been witnessing the normalisation, and rise, of a white-supremacist, ultranationalist brand of right-wing politics across Europe and the United States. While the shift towards extreme right alarmed many across the world, far-right ideologues of the Trumpian era swiftly found support in a seemingly unlikely place: India.

Many members of the so-called "alt-right" - a loosely knit coalition of populists, white supremacists, white nationalists and neo-Nazis - turned to India to find historic and current justifications for their racist, xenophobic and divisive views. Using a specific, "white nationalist" brand of Orientalism, they projected their fantasies about a racially pure society onto the Indian culture and in response received a warm welcome from Hindu fundamentalists in India.

While an alliance between the Hindu far right and the Western alt-right may appear confounding on the surface, it actually has a long history, going all the way back to the construction of the Aryan race identity, one of the ideological roots of Nazism, in the early 20th century.

In the 1930s, German nationalists embraced the 19th-century theory that Europeans and the original Sanskrit speakers of India who had built the highly developed Sanskrit civilisation - which white supremacists wanted to claim as their own - come from a common Indo-European, or Aryan, ancestor. They subsequently built their racist ideology on the assumed superiority of this "pure" race.

Savitri Devi (born Maximiani Portas), a French-Greek thinker and mysticist who later became a spiritual icon of Nazism, helped popularise the idea that all civilisation had its roots in this Aryan "master race" in India. She travelled to India in the early 1930s to "discover the source of the Aryan culture" and converted to Hinduism while there.

She quickly integrated herself into India's burgeoning Hindu nationalist movement by promoting theories that support privileged caste Hindus' superiority over Christians, Muslims and unprivileged caste Hindus in the country. In 1940, she married Asit Krishna Mukherji, a Hindu nationalist and Indian supporter of Nazism who had praised the Third Reich's commitment to ethnonationalism, seeing commonalities between the goals of the Hitler Youth and the youth movement of Hindu nationalism, Rashtriya Sevak Sangh (RSS).

Devi worked as a spy for the Axis forces in India throughout World War II and left the country after the defeat of Nazi Germany using a British-Indian passport. In the post-war period, she became an ardent Holocaust denier and was one of the founding members of the World Union of National Socialists, a conglomeration of neo-Nazi and far-right organisations from around the world.

Devi still has a strong influence over the Hindu nationalist movement in India. Her 1939 booklet titled A Warning to the Hindus, in which she cautions Indian nationalists to embrace their Hindu identity and guard the country against "non-Aryan" influences, such as Islam and Christianity, is still widely read and highly regarded among Hindu nationalists. Perhaps not surprisingly, recently Devi and her theories have also been rediscovered by right-wing ideologues in the West and she is now considered an alt-right icon.

However, the current connection between far-right groups in the West and Hindu nationalists is limited neither to Devi's teachings nor the old myth of the Aryan race.

Today, the two groups share a common goal in eroding the secular character of their respective states and a common "enemy" in Muslim minorities. This is why they often act in coordination and openly support each other.

In the US, the Republican Hindu Coalition, a group with strong links to the Hindu nationalist movement in India, has been rallying behind President Donald Trump's controversial immigration policies, like the Muslim ban and the border wall. Trump's campaign strategist and prominent alt-right figurehead Steve Bannon once called India's Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi "the Reagan of India".

Meanwhile, in India, a far-right Hindu nationalist group named Hindu Sena (Army of Hindus), which has been linked to a series of inter-communal incidents in India, has been throwing parties to mark Trump's birthday. The group's founder even claimed that "Trump is the only person who can save mankind."

In Canada, far-right Islamophobic organisations such as Rise Canada, which claims to "defend Canadian values" and combat "radical Islam", are popular among Hindu-nationalists. The group's logo even features a red maple leaf rising out of a lotus flower, which is often associated with Hinduism.

In Britain, the National Hindu Council of Temples (NHCTUK), a Hindu charity, recently caused controversy by inviting far-right Hindu nationalist Tapan Ghosh to speak at the parliament. Ghosh has previously suggested the UN should "control the birth rate of Muslims" and said all Muslims are "Jihadis". During his visit to the UK, Ghosh also attended celebrations of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, with cabinet ministers Amber Rudd and Priti Patel, and met the former neo-Nazi leader Tommy Robinson.

On top of their shared Islamophobia and disdain for secular state structures, the destructive actions, protests and aggravations of Hindu nationalists and the Western far right are also very much alike.

In November, the government of the state of Uttar Pradesh, which is led by the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), proposed to build a statue of the Hindu god Ram in Ayodhya, where the historic Babri Masjid was illegally demolished by Hindu nationalists in 1992. Only a month earlier, the same government pulled off a massive spectacle, having a helicopter drop off individuals dressed as Ram and Sita at the Babri Masjid site to mark the start of Diwali celebrations.

The sentiment behind these apparent attempts to intimidate Muslims and increase tensions between communities was in many ways similar to the far-right, white supremacist rally that shook Charlottesville in 2017. The neo-Nazis chanted "You will not replace us" as they marched through the streets of Charlottesville.

The far right in the US, Europe and Canada - emboldened by the electoral success of ultra-nationalist parties and individuals across the globe - aspire for a future in which secular protections are abandoned in favour of a system that favours the majority and protects the "white Christian identity" that they believe their nations were founded upon.

Likewise, Hindu nationalists in India, empowered by the BJP's landslide election victory in 2014, and inspired by European ethnonationalism and fascism, reject the constitutional secularism of the Indian state, propose that India is fundamentally a Hindu nation, and insist that minorities, especially Muslims and Christians, do not belong in a "Hindu country".

Ever since the start of the normalisation of far-right ideas in the West, a surge in racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic attacks was witnessed across the US and Europe.

The same happened in India after Hindutva officially became the governing ideology in the country. Over the past few years, countless Muslims, Christians and low-caste Hindus have been persecuted, assaulted and even killed for allegedly killing cows and many Muslims were targeted for allegedly participating in so-called "love jihad".

But despite all these similarities, there is major a difference between Hindu fundamentalism in India and far-right movements in the West: the liberal reaction to it.

While liberals and leftists quickly united against the rise of the far-right, they chose to largely ignore the rise of Hindu nationalism in the world's largest secular democracy. Especially after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the necessity of expanding the anti-fascist praxis to include all forms of racism, from anti-Semitism to Islamophobia, was emphasised by many. However, the opposition to Hindu nationalism has not yet been made part of the broader movement, despite the well-documented suffering of India's minorities under BJP's rule.

Instead, the idea that India is a "Hindu nation" is being accepted as a given by the majority of liberals. The fact that India's constitution defines the state as "secular" is being ignored, and Hindu nationalism is being presented as a benevolent movement despite ample evidence to the contrary.

White vegans in the West, for example, rejoiced over the decision by several Indian states to ban the consumption of beef, without bothering to understand what these laws would mean for Muslims and Dalits who had already been suffering at the hands of so-called "cow vigilantes". Animal rights and veganism advocate PETA has in fact gone further and berated vegetarians who consume milk in India for "supporting the beef industry", thus playing into the communal politics of food in India.

Hindu nationalism and white supremacy are the two sides of the same coin. For the global movement against racism, white-supremacy and fascism to succeed, anti-fascists across the world need to acknowledge and stand up to the Hind nationalism threat.

Hindus themselves, both in India and abroad, also need to take action and raise their voices against the abuses that are being committed in their names. One such organisation already exists for diaspora Hindus in North America: Sadhana. It is a coalition of progressive Hindus based in New York City, seeks to stop the use of Hindu thought for the purposes of misogyny, queerphobia, Islamophobia and white supremacy.

However, Hindu nationalism cannot be defeated by Hindus alone. People around the world who engage with and comment on the Indian culture on a regular basis, including sub-urban Yoga mums in the US and vegan activists in Europe, should educate themselves on the secular nature and diverse identities of India. They need to join the resistance against the oppression and abuse of the country's minorities and stop perpetuating the Hindu-nationalist myth that India is a "Hindu nation".

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance. Aadita Chaudhury is a PhD Candidate in Science & Technology Studies at York University, in Toronto, Canada.

[collegesakha]

Amity University, Noida (College Sakha)

Amity University, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, created in 1986, sets global education benchmarks using a system that matches the very best of practices, standards, concepts, and resources worldwide. Amity has changed into a massive brand in India. Amity is a member of the Association of Indian Universities and Association of Commonwealth Universities. With affiliations in UGC, NAAC,DEC, and many more, Amity has brought over 80,000 pupils for various programs. It provides instruction in India, Singapore, London, New York.

Amity University, Noida Rankings:-

Just 15 Universities/Institutions from India are in both rankings, such as 7 IIT’s and 3 Central Universities, where Amity is the sole non-profit private college to be contained in the orders.

Amity has 4500 Academicians, scientists, and researchers headed by 11 former vice-chancellors and 607 patents registered in Amity. Amity University has some of the most talented leaders in the country who come in the top institutions worldwide. They’re both academically and professionally best and possess high ethical values, so they are sometimes real function models. Amity Academic Staff College benchmarks with the most recent teaching approaches worldwide to educate its school.

Read More…

[postoastblog]

15 Famous Personalities Who Graduated As Engineers But Are Successful In Different Fields

Here is the list of a bunch of people who became an engineer but eventually ended up doing something entirely different and earned a huge name in that field.

Manohar Parrikar- He was one of the prominent leaders and the ex-Chief Minister of Goa. Parrikar finished his metallurgical engineering from IIT Bombay in the year 1978. He was also given with Distinguished Alumnus Award in the year 2001 by IIT Bombay.

Anil Kumble- He is the former Indian captain and is also the third-highest wicket-taker in test cricket and is also a legend among leg spinners of all time. He is a graduate of Mechanical Engineering from Rashtriya Vidyalaya College of Engineering, Bangalore.

Rowan Atkinson- He is known among all for his legendary role Mr. Bean. Atkinson has studied Electrical Engineering from Newcastle University along with this he also received the degree of MSc in Electrical Engineering at The Queen’s College, Oxford.

Arvind Kejriwal- He’s today the Chief Minister of New Delhi and has achieved the degree of Mechanical engineering from IIT Kharagpur in the year 1989. Before being a politician, he was also the Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax.

Kriti Sanon- Kriti Sanon is quite a popular actress in the Bollywood industry and graduated with a B. Tech degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering from Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, Uttar Pradesh.

Harsha Bhogle- Before being a cricket commentator, Bhogle completed his Chemical Engineering from Osmania University and further achieved a PGDM degree from IIM-Ahmedabad.

Akkineni Nagarjuna- Nagarjuna has acted in various films. He pursued a degree in Bachelor of Engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy, and also holds an M.S. in Automobile Engineering from Eastern Michigan University.

Ravichandran Ashwin- Ashwin is among one of the best spinners in Team India. He holds a B.Tech degree in Information Technology from SSN College of Engineering, located in Chennai. He went on further to join a software company post-graduation.

Varun Grover- Before being a writer and giving out some massive hits like Masaan, Ankhon Dekhi, and the Gangs of Wasseypur series, Varun pursued Civil Engineering from IIT BHU.

Taapsee Pannu- Taapsee is a well-known name in the Bollywood film industry and holds a degree in Computer Science Engineering fromGuru Tegh Bahadur Institute of Technology, New Delhi.

Javagal Srinath- Srinath is amongst one of the best fastest bowlers the Indian Cricket Team had. He has a BE degree in Instrumentation Technology from Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering, located in Mysuru.

Shankar Mahadevan – One of the top singers and music composers in India, Shankar is an engineer by profession. He graduated in Computer Science and Software Engineering from Ramrao Adik Institute of Technology in the city of Navi Mumbai. He also worked as a software engineer for some period.

Chetan Bhagat- A well-known Indian author and many Bollywood movies have been produced based on his novels. Chetan graduated in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Delhi and along with it he did MBA from the IIM Ahmedabad. But before working as a writer, he worked as an investment banker in Hong Kong for about a decade.

Cindy Crawford- Cindy Crawford is one of the highest-paid models in the entire world. However, she wanted a different destiny altogether, she graduated in chemical engineering at Northwestern University, Illinois before pursuing modeling.

Sonu Sood- He is one well-known name in the Bollywood industry and he works towards humanity. He is also an electrical engineer by profession from Yeshwantrao Chavan College of Engineering.

[olgagarmash]

Neglect of India’s health system fueled its Covid catastrophe – STAT – STAT

Covid-19 is surging uncontrollably throughout India, disrupting big cities like Mumbai and devastating rural areas where there is extreme poverty and hardly any health care. The heart-rending images of funeral pyres set up in public parks, burning an endless line of bodies, is only a glimpse into the tragedy unfolding across the country.

People are waiting outside hospitals — where there are no longer any beds or even oxygen — in 100-degree heat with their sick and dying loved ones.

The pro-nationalist government of Narendra Modi is partly to blame for not stopping the Kumbh Mela Hindu religious celebration that brought 2.5 million people to the Ganges River, and for carrying on with political rallies that attracted masses of people. But far more than hypernationalism is responsible for this catastrophe.

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During the 20 years that I reported on health for The Times of India and trained reporters to cover this beat, I saw how the health sector was neglected during India’s growth and development.

India’s health care system was envisaged soon after its independence in 1947 as a three-tier system that could cover the entire country. It was to have a primary care system at the village level, a secondary care system to cover smaller urban centers, and tertiary care for specialized treatment. Over the years, though, the emphasis moved to for-profit tertiary care hospitals, mainly in big cities, with state-of-the-art that provided care mainly to the urban rich. Profits from these hospitals, which go into paying the high salaries of doctors and top executives, took precedence over attempts to regulate them or stop malpractice, such as overcharging patients or unnecessary surgeries.

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Successive governments before Modi’s supported this unplanned growth, paying little heed to the health infrastructure that was underfunded, poorly staffed, and falling apart. Sushma Swaraj, a senior politician in the Bharatiya Janata party — today’s ruling party — who I interviewed in 1999 on the party’s absence of focus on health care in its parliamentary election manifesto, told me, “Health is a thing for the rich. We in India have to focus on getting bread to the poor.”

Leaders from other political parties voiced similar views. Few in the government or the legacy media considered health care to be an issue of national importance.

I have covered epidemics and pandemics in the past, though nothing as tragic as the spread of Covid-19 in India, and have seen the resulting chaos. In 1994, for example, after news emerged of cases of pneumonic plague in India, rumors of an airborne infection of plague prompted thousands to flee the city of Surat in western India and be admitted to hospitals in Delhi. There, as I found in my reporting, a specialized Hospital for Infectious Diseases was completely lacking in resources. I have also seen families wiped away in the AIDS epidemic in India’s villages with little access to testing or treatment and little attention paid to them by the government or the media.

The fact is that the poor in India have struggled to get health care for decades. Most health expenditures in India are paid for out of pocket and paying for health care is among the leading things that push people below the poverty line. A 2017 study by the Public Health Foundation of India found that health expenses were responsible for driving 55 million Indians into poverty between 2011 and 2012. As many as 90% of the poor have no health insurance.

Government after government has promoted medical tourism that entices people from the United States and other countries to come to India’s for-profit hospitals for dental, cosmetic, and other procedures. India’s ministry of tourism recently expanded its visa regime to allow e-tourist visas for medical tourism, a $3 billion industry that is expected to grow in the years ahead.

This has been at the expense of neglecting the vast network of health systems designed to serve the poor, who have always taken the brunt of neglecting public health.

The lack of oxygen to treat people with Covid-19 has drawn international attention. But this isn’t the first time the oxygen supply has been broken. Year after year, India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh sees outbreaks of Japanese encephalitis among children, a disease spread by the bite of a mosquito. In 2017, 30 children died suddenly at a hospital, likely due to a disruption in oxygen supply, though that could not be conclusively proven. It is, however, a reminder of what is happening in hospitals across India that have been running out of high-flow oxygen, resulting in deaths.

With little or no demand for improvement in health care from the middle class and elites, India’s public health system has taken a big hit over the years. Covid-19 has strained it to the breaking point and beyond, driving people from villages and smaller cities into bigger urban centers that are already unable to manage the surge of patients.

In the heat of the moment, it is easy to blame the Modi government for India’s feeble response to the Covid-19 surge. But bringing lasting change will require a long hard look at the planning and neglect of the past 74 years in independent India — both by India’s ruling classes and the media.

Kalpana Jain is a senior editor for ethics and religion at The Conversation U.S., a former reporter for the Times of India, a former Nieman Global Health Reporting Fellow, and author of “Positive Lives: The Story of Ashok and others living with HIV” (Penguin Global, 2003).

source https://wealthch.com/neglect-of-indias-health-system-fueled-its-covid-catastrophe-stat-stat/

[bbcbreakingnews]

North-South divide ‘toolkit’ being sold by BJP to public: Congress

NEW DELHI: A day after top BJP leaders accused Rahul Gandhi of belittling north Indians in a speech in Kerala, the Congress on Wednesday said its former chief had given a clarion call to the people to question the government on real issues and the North-South divide was a “toolkit” being sold by the BJP to the public. Congress’ chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala alleged that the BJP was raising “superficial” issues on a daily basis to divert the country’s attention from the people’s issues. His attack came a day after several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders and union ministers accused Gandhi of being an ‘opportunist’ and alleged that he belittled north Indians during the speech delivered in Kerala. Addressing a public gathering in Thiruvananthapuram, Gandhi had said, “For the first 15 years, I was an MP in the north. I had got used to a different type of politics. For me, coming to Kerala was very refreshing as suddenly I found that people are interested in issues and not just superficially but going into detail in issues.” Referring to Gandhi’s remarks, Surjewala said the former Congress president has given a clarion call to the people to question the government of the day, whether in the states or at the Centre, on issues paramount to people and to “ignore the superficial toolkit story being sold by the BJP day in and day out”. “The North-South divide is a toolkit being adopted and sold by the BJP to the news channels and the public. Let us all rise and ensure that the governments of the day answer on issues and not on superficiality that they want to divert our attention to,” he told reporters here. Surjewala asserted that the real issues before the country were of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) nose-diving and all the small and medium businesses “virtually in ruin”. “It is an issue in this country that the Constitution is under attack and people are under attack by their own government at the Centre and in many states ruled by the BJP,” he alleged. Surjewala said the real issues include that people have “lost their right” to dissent and express themselves. “It is an issue that lakhs and lakhs of farmers are sitting on Delhi’s borders yet an intemperate, insensitive government refuses to listen to them. Even 250 farmers have died but the government refuses to listen,” he said. Surjewala alleged that the Constitution, civil liberties and all institutions of democracy “are under attack”, which was an important issue. “It is an issue that the BJP buys mandate, they are stifling and trampling on people’s mandate everyday…it is an issue that those in power are trying to divert attention by raising superficial issues,” he said. Surjewala then cited comments by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders attacking the opposition, to claim that they tried to divert people’s attention from the real issues. The sharp attack by the Congress came after several BJP leaders, labelling Gandhi’s comments as anti-north Indians, attacked him and alleged that he was being an opportunist despite him and his family members having won several elections from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. Gandhi, who was representing the Amethi constituency of Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha since 2004, contested from the Wayanad seat in Kerala simultaneously in the 2019 general elections . Although, he lost Amethi to Smriti Irani of the BJP, he won from the Congress bastion in Kerala.

source https://bbcbreakingnews.com/2021/02/24/north-south-divide-toolkit-being-sold-by-bjp-to-public-congress/

[icantthinkofacoolblognamesposts]

It has reinforced a common belief in the Valley: the August 5 decisions were aimed at robbing Kashmiri Muslims of economic and political rights.

One year after special status ended, Kashmiris have disappeared from government in J&K

On April 2, a photograph from an official meeting of the Jammu and Kashmir administration created a buzz on social media in the Kashmir Valley. At first glance, the picture appeared unremarkable. It showed Jammu and Kashmir Lieutenant Governor GC Murmu holding a meeting with a battery of bureaucrats.

Social media users in the Valley were quick to point out that, out of the 19 men in the photograph, there was only one Kashmiri Muslim – Farooq Ahmad Lone, a former Indian Administrative Service officer from the Valley.

“Islam is the major religion practiced in Kashmir, with 97.00% of the region’s population identifying as Muslims and among them just Farooq Lone sb is standing alone in decision making with regard to highly Muslim populated Jammu and Kashmir as I could see,” said a Facebook user from Kashmir.

The picture cut to the heart of the anxiety that has gripped the Valley ever since August 5, 2019, when the Centre stripped Jammu and Kashmir of special status and split the former state into two Union Territories amid the severest lockdown the region has ever seen. Parliament also repealed Article 35A, which had empowered the government of the former state to define “permanent residents” of Jammu and Kashmir and reserve for them specific rights, such as the right to own land and hold government jobs, in the state.

The common refrain among Kashmiris in the aftermath of the decision was this: the move was aimed at introducing demographic change to the predominantly Muslim Kashmir Valley, robbing its inhabitants of economic and political rights.

The legislative assembly of the former state, now disbanded, had traditionally been dominated by the Muslim-majority Valley. With the August 5 decisions, Valley residents feared the “comeback of Dogra rule”, referring to the unpopular Hindu kings of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, which existed before 1947. In other words, they feared a government and administration that did not represent the Kashmiri Muslim majority of the region.

It was not just the picture that triggered these fears.

Vanishing Kashmiris “In civil bureaucracy, police and judiciary, Muslims in Kashmir feel nowhere,” said Ghulam Hassan Mir, a former minister in the state and now a member of the newly floated Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party, in a recent interview. “They are being sidelined and there is complete imbalance in the system. Kashmiris are found nowhere and even in the civil secretariat, which is the seat of power, the dejected Kashmiri officers are feeling detached.”

This marginalisation may not have started last year. Two former ministers who had served in the governments of the former state said that Delhi had always intervened in crucial appointments. A former cabinet minister who served in the People’s Democratic Party-Bharatiya Janata Party coalition government traces the marginalisation of Kashmiri officers back to 1989, when militancy spread rapidly across the Valley.

“It has been like this since 1989,” said the minister, who was among the many Kashmiri politicians arrested just before August 5. “Most of the key posts in the administration and police were held by non-local bureaucrats and officers on Delhi’s bidding. But state governments did act as a bit of buffer in such a scenario because there was accountability before the people. Tomorrow, they would have to go to people for votes.”

That has changed dramatically since the state assembly was dissolved, said another former cabinet minister. “The bureaucrats leading this administration don’t even want to stay in Kashmir,” he said. “Either they stay in their fortified official accommodations or they prefer to spend their week days in Jammu or Delhi. There’s no connection with the public.”

The change in leadership starts from the top. For years, the state had coalition governments led by a Kashmir-based party and a Kashmiri chief minister. The coalition partner was usually a national party, which won most of its votes from Jammu. But after the PDP-BJP government fell in June 2018, Kashmiri Muslims have had a waning presence in government.

Since the BJP walked out of the coalition in 2018, Jammu and Kashmir has been governed directly by the Centre, first through the governor and then, after it became a Union Territory, through the lieutenant governor. Both acted in consultation with an advisory council. In these two years, only one Kashmiri bureaucrat has been part of the council – Khurshid Ahmad Ganai, a retired Indian Administrative Service officer. His term ended on October 31, 2019, the day Jammu and Kashmir officially lost statehood.

Since then, Kashmiris have disappeared from the core unit of the administration altogether. While the administration is closely controlled by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs – most important policy decisions have been announced by it – the lieutenant governor and his four advisors are now the face of government in Jammu and Kashmir. Each advisor has the powers of a minister, supervising different departments instead of holding portfolios. Three of the advisors are from Jammu. The fourth is from Uttar Pradesh. None of them is from the Kashmir Valley.

Faces of the Union Territory administration

GC Murmu, a 1985-batch Indian Administrative Service officer of the Gujarat cadre, served as principal secretary to Narendra Modi during his tenure as chief minister of Gujarat and later as expenditure secretary at the Centre. Back in 2004, he had also faced allegations that he “tutored” witnesses who appeared before the Nanavati Commission, set up to look into the 2002 Gujarat riots. The allegations were dismissed by the Supreme Court-appointed special investigation team. Murmu was appointed lieutenant governor on October 31.

Kewal Kumar Sharma, on the governor’s advisory council since 2018, continued with Murmu. A retired Indian Administrative Service officer from Jammu division’s Kathua district, he has been chief secretary of Delhi and Goa as well as advisor to the administrator of Chandigarh. He was also secretary in the Union human resources ministry in 2016. At present, Sharma supervises a wide range of departments – from revenue, planning development and industries to education and horticulture.

Also continuing from the 2018 advisory council is Farooq Khan, a former Indian Police Service officer from Jammu. After he retired from the police, Khan had joined the BJP at a public rally held by Modi in Kathua during the run up to the Lok Sabha elections of 2014. He is the grandson of Peer Mohammad Khan, the first state president of the Jammu and Kashmir Jana Sangh.

Farooq Khan was instrumental in establishing the Jammu and Kashmir Police’s counterinsurgency wing, now known as the special operations group, during the peak of the militancy in the early 1990s. But his career was attended by controversy. In 2000, when five men were killed in an alleged fake encounter in Pathribal in Anantnag district, he was the senior superintendent in charge. In April 2003, he was suspended by the state government for two and a half years. In September 2005, he was exonerated by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

At present, Farooq Khan handles food, civil supplies and consumer affairs, social welfare, tribal affairs, labour and employment, youth services and sports, among other departments.

The only person from outside Jammu and Kashmir to be part of the advisory council is Rajeev Rai Bhatnagar, who retired as director general of the Central Reserve Police Force. Bhatnagar is in charge of health and medical education, public works, irrigation and flood control, transport and animal husbandry in the union territory administration.

The most recent entrant to the advisory council is Baseer Ahmad Khan, appointed in March. This was soon after the Jammu and Kashmir High Court had expressed concern about the “inordinate delay” in framing charges in the Gulmarg land scam. Khan is one of the accused.

Baseer Khan was due to retire from the Indian Administrative Service on June 30, 2019. But as the government secretly geared up for sweeping changes to the state, it gave him a one-year extension, calling it a “special case”. When Jammu and Kashmir lost statehood, he was divisional commissioner of Kashmir. As advisor, Khan handles power development, rural development & panchayati raj, disaster management, culture, tourism and floriculture.

Also aiding the council is chief secretary BVR Subrahmanyam, a 1987-batch IAS officer of the Chhattisgarh cadre. He hails from Andhra Pradesh.

The chain of command

Kashmiri officers have vanished further down the chain of command as well. There were 58 Indian Administrative Officers in the state cadre of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir – the cadre has now been merged into the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram-Union Territories cadre. Of those 58, only seven were Kashmiri Muslim. That included Shah Faesal, the star bureaucrat who went on to form his own political party. After August 5, he was among the scores of political leaders detained under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, a preventive detention law. He remains under house arrest.

Key departments like home, finance, health, environment are headed by officers from outside Jammu and Kashmir. The only officer from the Kashmir Valley running an important department is Asgar Hassan Samoon, principal secretary for school education.

While Jammu division is headed by Sanjeev Verma, a local resident, Kashmir’s divisional commissioner, Pandurang Kondbarao Pole, hails from Maharashtra. In the 10 districts of the Valley, only four district commissioners are Kashmiri.

Meanwhile, the Jammu and Kashmir Police force is headed by Dilbag Singh from Punjab. Mukesh Singh from Delhi heads the police in the Jammu division and Vijay Kumar from Bihar is the inspector general of Kashmir. None of the five deputy inspector generals is from Kashmir. In the 13 police districts of the Kashmir Valley, only two are under the charge of Kashmiri superintendents.

Kashmiri judges are a minority in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, too. Of the 11 sitting judges, only two are Kashmiri Muslim while two are Kashmiri Pandit.

A logjam

The August 5 decision also brought about a crucial change in the bureaucratic structure. While Jammu and Kashmir had special status, only 50% of its All India Service officers were direct recruits chosen through examinations held by the Union Public Service Commission. The other came from Kashmir service officers who were promoted into All India Services. In other states, 67% of the officers are direct recruits while only 33% are officers inducted from the state services. When Jammu and Kashmir lost special status, it also became subject to the 67:33 rule.

Central changes apart, internal wrangles have meant promotions are stalled in both the Kashmir Police Service and the Kashmir Administrative Service.

“You can blame the failure to induct local KPS officers into the Indian Police Service on three reasons,” said a senior police officer in the Valley, speaking off the record. “The seniority disputes between officers, litigation and the failure of state governments in the past. There’s no word on when it’s going to happen.”

Since 2009, no Kashmir Police Service officer has been promoted into the Indian Police Service. At present, all 66 Indian Police Services officers in the Jammu and Kashmir cadre are those who were recruited directly through examinations held by the Union Public Service Commission. The total strength of the Jammu and Kashmir Police’s IPS cadre is 147, out of which 80 posts are for direct recruits and 67 slots are reserved for those promoted from the state service. A majority of the posts now lie vacant.

There is a similar logjam with inductions from the Kashmir Administrative Service into the Indian Administrative Service. “There has been no induction into the IAS for more than 10-11 years because of the dispute over the seniority list of the 1999 KAS batch,” said a Kashmir Administrative Service officer who did not want to be named. “There have been petitions, counter petitions and all those discussions but so far the logjam hasn’t been broken.”

Had the dispute been solved in time, the officer calculated, 50 to 55 Kashmir Administrative Service officers would have been inducted into the Central service over the last decade.

A poor track record

Even within the state services, observers have noted that recruitments have been skewed against Kashmiris for years. Historian and former civil servant Khalid Bashir Ahmad notes that between 1995 and 2014, over 65% of the state services were made up of recruits from Jammu and about 32.7% by recruits from Kashmir. This despite the Kashmir division being the most populous region of the former state.

As for Kashmiri representation in the police, Ahmad traces a long history of marginalisation that goes back to Dogra times. “During the last 102 years for which record is available, out of 34 police chiefs in the Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir, only 2 were Muslims,” he writes. “In Ghulam Jeelani Pandit, the state had its last Muslim police chief as back as in 1989.”

The former minister who was imprisoned after August 5 was unsurprised by this track record. “This is nothing new,” he shrugged. “But what’s happening now is the culmination of ultimate design of Hindutva which is the decimation of Kashmiri Muslims.”

[ptshekradixit]

Pt. Shekhar Dikshit is President of Rashtriya Kisan Manch and famous Indian Youth brahmin Farmer Leader in Lucknow - Uttar Pradesh. social activist, Leader of Kisan Union, Former President of Kisan Manch"  

[ericfruits]

India’s bureaucrats are fighting covid-19 with red tape

IN MID-MAY, seeking to reflate his political buoyancy after weeks of covid-19 lockdown, Narendra Modi announced a new ideology. Henceforth, said India’s prime minister, the nation would strive for atmanirbharta, or self-reliance. It may be that North Korea’s unlamented Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, got there first with his slogan of juche, which means much the same thing. Yet the clunky Hindi word does seem to have caught on, albeit less with the Indian public than with their bureaucratic overlords.

Perhaps this is because Indian officialdom, ensconced in government housing and enjoying lifetime jobs with perks such as office peons and drivers, access to top schools and hospitals, and memberships of the best clubs, has a long tradition of insouciant independence from the mundane world of tradesmen, farmers, parents or other voters. Yet the current crisis has cast this divine detachment in even starker light than usual.

India’s bureaucrats issued well over 4,000 different rules during the two long months that they kept India’s 1.3bn other citizens shut indoors. Most of this torrent of instruction was well meant. Yet many of the rules caused as much trouble as they resolved. This is most obvious regarding tens of millions of migrant workers who were left without subsistence when Mr Modi imposed an instant and total nationwide lockdown on March 25th. As their desperation grew, many attempted to walk back to their villages, braving not just heat, hunger and exhaustion, but beatings from the police. By mid-May the bureaucrats changed tack and scrambled to arrange transport for stranded migrants, many of whom then carried covid-19 to the remotest corners of the country.

With the lockdown lifted and the economy restarting, the migration has already reversed, with workers trickling back to jobs in cities. Yet India’s Supreme Court has only just taken notice of their earlier plight. Enhancing a reputation as perhaps the most otherworldly of all the country’s institutions, on June 9th it issued a suo moto ruling (meaning one taken on its own initiative, in the spirit of atmanirbharta) ordering India’s states to transport migrants home within 15 days.

Some of the government’s lofty contradictions concern petty matters. Upon reopening parks, for instance, India’s capital decreed that citizens should be allowed in only from 7am to 10am and 3.30pm to 6.30pm, ensuring more crowding and less social distance. Residents of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, recently read this cryptic announcement: “All shopping malls will open but all shops in the malls will remain closed.” On the very day that Haryana, a state that abuts Delhi, reopened its border with the capital, Delhi closed its border with Haryana. Some 2m daily commuters between the big city and its suburbs have repeatedly been stuck in monster jams, caught out by such petal-plucking changes of mind.

The rules can prove deadly as well as irritating. Perhaps hoping to prevent crowding, Delhi’s government has banned some hospitals from testing for covid-19. Doctors say this is mad. It means they cannot tell, for example, if a baby born to a mother with covid needs to be kept isolated from other newborns, or if a patient being treated for another disease might have covid, too. Medical associations, including one of epidemiologists, have repeatedly condemned the government for hiding information and failing to consult experts, to no avail.

The authorities’ atmanirbharta can also have sinister implications. The Supreme Court earlier this month blithely delayed yet another attempt to secure the release of a former government minister who has been held without charge under house arrest for ten months. He is 82 years old, but has the misfortune to come from the restive Kashmir valley. Lower courts, for their part, have repeatedly denied bail to Varavara Rao, an 81-year-old poet awaiting trial in Mumbai with ten other elderly activists for supposedly inciting those at the bottom of the caste ladder to riot two years ago.

Even Amit Shah, the home minister, who as Mr Modi’s campaign wizard is reputed for sensing the national pulse, seems to be infected with atmanirbharta. Showing unusual detachment in a recent online election rally, he admitted that the government may have fallen short in its handling of covid-19. Then he added a question that rang particularly tuneless after six years in power with a crushing parliamentary majority: “But I want to ask the opposition, what did you do?”

Editor’s note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our coronavirus hub

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline "Circulars, directives and rules"

https://ift.tt/30vFo9E

[marwahstudios]

50 Most Influential Indians 2020 by Fame India Magazine and Asia Post

New Delhi: The list of ‘50 Most Influential Indians’ compiled by Fame India Magazine and Asia Post is based on a survey of 12,000 respondents across India. With 99.6 percent people voting/giving views in his favour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the most influential Indian and a mass leader.

If we ask you to find a platform that has Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, Kerala CM P. Vijayan,  Mukesh Ambani ,  Ratan Tata & Ravish Kumar together in it, then you may certainly have a tough time in doing it. But we have one for you.  Fame India Magazine and Asia Post  have together compiled a list of ‘50 Most Influential Indians.��

“The list is based on a survey that saw 12,000 respondents take part. These respondents, chosen from across the social, intellectual and professional lines included writers, artists, bureaucrats, senior journalists, social activists and businessmen. The man who has topped the list should not come at all as a surprise because he is not just the most influential Indian in India at this time but probably most influential Indian in the world, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With 99.6 percent people voting/giving views in his favour, he is the most influential Indian and a mass leader,” informed Dr. Sandeep Marwah Chancellor AAFT University of Media And Arts and part of Fame India Selection Board.

Hindi heartland Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been liked by 97 percent of the respondents for his honest image and administrative qualities. Home Minister Amit Shah gets thumbs up from 96.5 percent for his determination, ability to take tough decisions and implement them. India’s well-known industrialist Ratan Tata has secured the fourth position with 95.2 percent votes. Mostly, people chose him on the basis of his social responsibility and astute entrepreneurial abilities. The fifth is Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India. He was chosen by respondents primarily for his contribution towards making the power of the Internet grow deeper in society.

For his efforts towards successfully containing COVID-19 spread in the state, Kerala Chief Minister gets the sixth position. Sri Sri Ravishankar, spiritual leader and messenger of world peace secured the seventh position. Defense Minister Rajnath Singh has successfully made to the top 10. Respondents voted him for his clean image and efforts towards self-reliant India in defense manufacturing. The man of all seasons, NSA Ajit Doval, has secured the ninth spot, while Odisha chief minister who enjoys a great connect with common people, Naveen Patnaik comes 10th on the list. PM Modi’s handpicked man PK Mishra, his Principal Secretary is on the 11th position for his managerial skills and effective execution. The young and effective Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Heman Soren, is the 12th, and Delhi CM Arvind  Kejriwal has found the 13th place on the list.

Editorial director of Fame India Magazine, US Sonthalia on the preparation of the list said “There were a total nine heads including personality, impact, vision, image, pro-development outlook and efforts towards upliftment of the society under which we have carried out the survey to select these 50 most influential Indians of 2020. The number of respondents was around 12000 which includes people from the varied field like social work, theatre, cinema, art, journalism, industry, commerce and cooperative. Fame India’s objective behind acknowledgement of such people is to set a high-performance standard for the rest in the society”.

Founder of AAFT Sandeep Marwah said “These 50 Indians are the torch-bearers of the New India that we think of creating. The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand. These people are the living example of it”.

Nitin Gadkari, the Union Minister who will always talk of growth, development and is known to be the man of his words, is 14th. For making positive reforms in Railways, Piyush Goel gets the 15th rank. ‘Sushasan Babu’ Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is the 16th for his pro-development governance in the state. Former health minister and BJP’s national president JP Nadda is the 17th, current Health Minister Dr Harshvardhan is the 18th, Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla is the 19th, while Baba Ramdev who has taken ‘swadeshi’ to new heights is the 20th influential man on this list.

NDA secured 37.36 percent votes in 2019 Lok Sabha polls and got 303 seats. While Rahul Gandhi-led UPA got 19.01 percent of the total turnout and managed to take the tally to 52. The brighter side UPA got eight more seats than 2014. Rahul Gandhi, being the face of the largest Opposition party, secured the 21st spot. Isha foundation’s head spiritual leader Sadguru Jaggi Vasudevan is 22nd. Bollywood star Akshay Kumar is 23rd. Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs and Coal & Mines Pralhad Joshi has started a wave of reforms in the sector and thus gets 24th position, while Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar is 25th on the list.

Chief Minister of Goa and the suave politician Dr Pramod Sawant is 26th, Punjab Chief Minister and man of action Captain Amrinder Singh is 27th, Minister of State (IC) for Power and Renewables RK Singh is 28th and effective bureaucrat Ajay Bhalla (IAS) is the 29th on the list. The 30th on the list is Health Secretary Priti Sudan (IAS) who has been hitting headlines for all the good reasons of late. Dr Ajay Kumar (IAS), who has been immensely effective as Secretary Defence Manufacturing and Secretary Defence, has secured the 31st spot. India’s first Chief of Defence Staff General Bipin Rawat, the industrialist Gautam Adani, Pharma giant Cadila’s owner Pankaj Bhai Patel, Sajjan Jindal, Founder of Avenue SuperMarts Radha Krishna Damani, T-Series’ Bhushan Kumar, Industrialist much accessible to common people Anand Mahindra, Sulabh International’s founder Dr Bindeshwar Pathak and IFFCO’s MD & CEO Dr US Awasthi have been placed between 32nd to 40th in the list. Dr Awasthi is the only name from the cooperative sector to have made it to the list.

An IAS officer of 1987 batch (MP cadre) and Managing Director of Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Ltd (TRIFED) Pravir Krishna gets the 41st spot on the list. Krishna has the credit of steering the federation towards profitable avenues. Secretary Biotechnology department Renu Swarup (IAS), ISRO president K Sivan and Director of the National Institute of Virology Priya Abhraham have made it to the 42nd, 43rd and 44th spots in the list, respectively. On the 45th position in the list is PayTM Founder & CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Apart from having been featured in the Time Magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People, Sharma also has India’s digital payment revolution to his credit.

ICMR’s Dr Nivedita Gupta who has played a crucial role in strategic planning to augment the testing capacity for COVID-19 in India is the 46th on the list. AIIMS director Dr Randeep Guleria, Editor-in-Chief of Hindustan newspaper Shashi Shekhar, Magsaysay awardee journalist Ravish Kumar and Founder-Owner of Republic TV Arnab Goswami have secured the 47th, 48th, 49th and 50th spots on the list of most influential Indians 2020, brought to you exclusively by Fame India with Asia post as the research partner supported by AAFT University of Media And Arts.

[bigyack-com]

The Indian State’s approach to CAA-NRC is flawed - analysis

How does the Indian State think and reason when it encounters a crisis? Is it possible to understand its process of thinking and reasoning through the actions of its institutions?This article is an attempt to understand these processes by examining the State’s approach to the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) 2019 which have, together, brought about a about a crisis of Indian democracy, and more particularly, of the citizen.Ranjan Gogoi, former Chief Justice of India, dubbed the NRC as a futuristic document, a referent. Seemingly, the Indian State now seems to share a deep desire to implement a nationwide NRC, and redo it in Assam, even though recent statements made by top leaders — including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah — have sought to reverse such an understanding. The National Population Register (NPR) is widely understood to be the first step towards a nationwide NRC.With the passing of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill in December last year, the first set of protests broke out in the Northeast, and particularly, in Assam. But the difference between the protest in Assam and the rest of the country remains since the former supports the NRC and still shares a strong anti-Bangladeshi sentiment.Soon, anti-CAA protests spread across the country and, unsurprisingly, the administration came down brutally on the protesters in Assam and Uttar Pradesh (UP), killing more than two dozen people and leaving several others severely injured. Responding to the protest, large parts of Assam, UP and several other states were put under curfew, Internet services curtailed and thousands of paramilitary and army personnel deployed.Why is the government not responding to the demands of the CAA protestors? Why is it that, despite so many reports of malpractice and deliberate exclusions in the NRC, the State went ahead with the process? Can they be read as anomalies?An answer to how the State and the administration handles the protestors and those malpractices and exclusions can be found in the practice of natural sciences in terms of how they address crisis in their various disciplines.The process of an “anomaly” that Thomas Kuhn pointed out in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, while speaking about crises, will be of interest here. An anomaly can be read as a deviation from a certain expected behaviour, be it in an experiment or a reaction to a policy instituted by our government, and the injury and suffering people are made to undergo. Suicides linked to the NRC process, detention, international criticism, anti-CAA protests across the country, reports of malpractice and discrimination against minorities through the NRC process can be all read as anomalies in the new citizenship discourse. These instances are not treated as a danger to the design of citizenship that want India to adopt but rather as anomalies that can be corrected or ignored.The CAA provides a partial treatment of the anomaly of people excluded by the NRC process, by making a provision to grant citizenship only to the Hindus that are potentially left out of the NRC process. In doing so, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) adds to the paradigm of the Hindu rashtra, or Hindu nation.Moreover, the CAA also creates an anomaly in the process by denting the secular fabric of the nation. The anomaly is so severe that it has brought about this crisis of our democracy. This is another reason why we ought to oppose both the processes and not just one, because, by design, both are anti-minority and undemocratic.Anomalies are also created by a certain politics of sub-nationalism, which, in turn, revives the wounds that gives the State a chance to become the guardian of people. The State can also create anomalies so that it can show its might. In order to show its might, it needs a soft target in the form of the linguistic and religious minorities.In science, an anomaly in an experiment does not amount to abandoning a certain theory or method involved in the experiment. Experiments are run again, and corrective measures are taken to prevent or minimise anomalies. When it comes to the NRC and CAA, is the Indian State thinking the way a scientist would treat their experiments?It turns out that 1.9 million excluded from the Assam NRC was not a satisfactory number in the experiment of citizenship, for the government and the Assamese nationalists both demanded a do-over. So, like a scientist redoing their experiment if it fails to yield a desired result, the State too wants to run a new experiment of NRC/NPR to produce a desired result which may exclude millions more. The only difference here is that the BJP wants an increased exclusion of the Muslims from India and the Assamese nationalist wants a larger number of “foreigners” to be excluded from Assam. This is why the secular nature of protest in Assam against CAA is also a myth.The way a scientist approaches their discipline in moments of crisis — to its anomalies — shows remarkable similarities with how the Indian State is now approaching its policies and political subjects. However, the difference between both the actors is crucial as a scientist primarily does it with sincerity and good intentions, but the State’s actions remain deeply problematic and potentially divisive.The cost of speaking truth to power are sometimes bullet wounds. And in the CAA-NRC experiment, death and detention are solutions that remove anomalies.Suraj Gogoi is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the National University of Singapore The views expressed are personal Read the full article

[mideastsoccer]

China and India place risky bets on Muslim acquiescence to anti-Muslim policies

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, Patreon and Castbox.

Last month’s Islamic summit in Malaysia failed to challenge with a bang Saudi influence in the Islamic world and Muslim silence about repression of adherents to the faith in countries like China and India. Yet, it has produced ripples that spotlight the risks and fragility of opportunistic acquiescence.

“Despite failing to achieve its immediate objective, the Kuala Lumpur summit has galvanized a stronger response by the OIC and the Gulf Arab states on issues affecting Muslims in India and, to a lesser extent, China,’ said Hasan AlHasan, a scholar who focuses on Gulf-South Asia relations, referring by its initials to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates successfully pressured Muslim countries like Pakistan and Indonesia to boycott the Kuala Lumpur gathering because it was organized beyond the auspices of the Saudi-dominated, Riyadh-based OIC, the usual organizer of Islamic summits.

The Gulf states also feared that the gathering, called to draw attention to the plight of persecuted Muslim minorities, threatened to embarrass Saudi Arabia, the UAE and others who have endorsed the brutal repression of Turkic Muslims in China’s troubled north-western province of Xinjiang and remained silent about mounting discrimination of the world’s largest Muslim minority in India so as not to jeopardize economic relations.

The Gulf states were also worried that expressions of concern about the plight of Chinese Muslims would spotlight their adoption of aspects of China’s developing Orwellian surveillance state that has been most comprehensive in the crackdown in Xinjiang.

More fundamentally, the Kuala Lumpur summit, supported by countries like Turkey, Iran and Qatar as well as Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, highlighted the struggle for leadership of the Islamic world as well as Malaysia’s strained ties with key Gulf states.

Breaches in Saudi and UAE-led efforts to prevent the plight of their co-religionists from disrupting relations with India and China are however emerging and could be widened by a suggestion by India’s top military commander that Kashmiris be interned in ‘de-radicalization camps’ after Prime Minister Narendra Modi withdrew Kashmir’s status as the country’s only Muslim state and imposed harsh security measures.

General Bipin Rawat’s suggestion raised the spectre of India emulating China’s system of re-education camps in Xinjiang in which at least one million Turkic Muslims are believed to have been incarcerated in an effort to get them to accept that President Xi Jinping’s thoughts supersede precepts of Islam.

General Rawat’s suggestion came on the back of an amended Indian citizenship law that made religion a criterion for refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh but excluded Muslims as well as a Supreme Court decision that was widely seen as favouring Hindus in a dispute over the site of a destroyed mosque in Ajodhya in Uttar Pradesh that Hindus believe was the birthplace of one of their most revered deities.

If implemented, General Rawat’s suggestion would make it more difficult for Muslim states to not only turn a blind eye to what is happening in India but also to the crackdown in China.

Acquiescent Muslim states are already under pressure from Pakistan that is seeking to extract a price for dropping its original support of the Kuala Lumpur summit by pushing the Islamic world to speak out about Kashmir, popular pressure in some Gulf states, and mounting anti-Chinese sentiment in various Central Asian nations.

Pakistan was awarded with the OIC criticizing the amended citizenship law and the court decision and agreeing to discuss Kashmir at a meeting in April although it was unclear at what level.

Similarly, the UAE appeared to be acknowledging Indonesia’s decision not to send vice president Ma’ruf Amin, a senior member of Nahdlatul Ulema, with 50 million followers the world’s largest Muslim organization, to Kuala Lumpur with pledges of US$23 billion in investments.

Efforts by a majority of Muslim states to ignore the plight of their co-religionists may however be built on ice that is melting beyond the OIC concession to discuss Kashmir.

Last month, Nahdlatul Ulema, as well as Muhammadiyah, with 30 million followers another major Indonesian Muslim organization, issued statements condemning the crackdown in Xinjiang.

At the same time, Muhyiddin Junaidi of the Indonesian Council of Ulema, the country’s top clerical body and one of a number of Muslim leaders invited by China to Xinjiang in a bid to convince them that reports of a crackdown were inaccurate, called on the government to more openly denounce Chinese policy.

Standing up for endangered and disenfranchised Muslim and non-Muslim minorities is a litmus test for Nahdlatul Ulema, which has launched a global effort to promote a recontextualization of Islam as well as a humanitarian interpretation of the faith that emphasizes human rights.

Kuwaiti lawmakers last month petitioned the government to speak out about the plight of Muslims in China and India while Bahrain’s Council of Representatives welcomed the new year with a statement describing India’s amended citizenship law as discriminatory and urging “the international community to … save the lives of innocent Uighur Muslims” in China.”

Pressure to speak out about anti-Muslim policies in China and India could put steps by various Gulf and Central Asian nations to adopt aspects of the surveillance system adopted by China in the firing line.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been accused of deploying surveillance software to monitor the communications of regime critics in country and abroad as well as activists and journalists.

Central Asian nations such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, where anti-Chinese sentiment is simmering, are about to test China’s Orwellian citizen scoring system that is being introduced to score a person’s trustworthiness.

The system would determine what benefits a citizen is entitled to, including access to credit, high speed internet service and fast-tracked visas for travel based on data garnered from millions of cameras in public places, social media and online shopping data as well as scanning of irises and content on mobile phones at random police checks.

China has already begun to make deployment of its intrusive surveillance systems a pre-condition for investment in Central Asia. In some cases, China appears willing to supply the infrastructure at no cost as part of a Smart City project developed by controversial telecom giant Huawei for initial roll-out in former Soviet states. 

Liu Jiaxing, head of Huawei’s representative office in Uzbekistan, disclosed China’s insistence on adopting its surveillance approach in an interview with an Uzbek news outlet. “Investors will only go where the situation is stable. In view of this, the implementation of the Safe City project is very important for Uzbekistan as it will help the country develop its investment potential,” Mr. Liu said. 

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture

[olgagarmash]

Covid-19 is surging uncontrollably throughout India, disrupting big cities like Mumbai and devastating rural areas where there is extreme poverty and hardly any health care. The heart-rending images of funeral pyres set up in public parks, burning an endless line of bodies, is only a glimpse into the tragedy unfolding across the country.

People are waiting outside hospitals — where there are no longer any beds or even oxygen — in 100-degree heat with their sick and dying loved ones.

The pro-nationalist government of Narendra Modi is partly to blame for not stopping the Kumbh Mela Hindu religious celebration that brought 2.5 million people to the Ganges River, and for carrying on with political rallies that attracted masses of people. But far more than hypernationalism is responsible for this catastrophe.

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During the 20 years that I reported on health for The Times of India and trained reporters to cover this beat, I saw how the health sector was neglected during India’s growth and development.

India’s health care system was envisaged soon after its independence in 1947 as a three-tier system that could cover the entire country. It was to have a primary care system at the village level, a secondary care system to cover smaller urban centers, and tertiary care for specialized treatment. Over the years, though, the emphasis moved to for-profit tertiary care hospitals, mainly in big cities, with state-of-the-art that provided care mainly to the urban rich. Profits from these hospitals, which go into paying the high salaries of doctors and top executives, took precedence over attempts to regulate them or stop malpractice, such as overcharging patients or unnecessary surgeries.

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Successive governments before Modi’s supported this unplanned growth, paying little heed to the health infrastructure that was underfunded, poorly staffed, and falling apart. Sushma Swaraj, a senior politician in the Bharatiya Janata party — today’s ruling party — who I interviewed in 1999 on the party’s absence of focus on health care in its parliamentary election manifesto, told me, “Health is a thing for the rich. We in India have to focus on getting bread to the poor.”

Leaders from other political parties voiced similar views. Few in the government or the legacy media considered health care to be an issue of national importance.

I have covered epidemics and pandemics in the past, though nothing as tragic as the spread of Covid-19 in India, and have seen the resulting chaos. In 1994, for example, after news emerged of cases of pneumonic plague in India, rumors of an airborne infection of plague prompted thousands to flee the city of Surat in western India and be admitted to hospitals in Delhi. There, as I found in my reporting, a specialized Hospital for Infectious Diseases was completely lacking in resources. I have also seen families wiped away in the AIDS epidemic in India’s villages with little access to testing or treatment and little attention paid to them by the government or the media.

The fact is that the poor in India have struggled to get health care for decades. Most health expenditures in India are paid for out of pocket and paying for health care is among the leading things that push people below the poverty line. A 2017 study by the Public Health Foundation of India found that health expenses were responsible for driving 55 million Indians into poverty between 2011 and 2012. As many as 90% of the poor have no health insurance.

Government after government has promoted medical tourism that entices people from the United States and other countries to come to India’s for-profit hospitals for dental, cosmetic, and other procedures. India’s ministry of tourism recently expanded its visa regime to allow e-tourist visas for medical tourism, a $3 billion industry that is expected to grow in the years ahead.

This has been at the expense of neglecting the vast network of health systems designed to serve the poor, who have always taken the brunt of neglecting public health.

The lack of oxygen to treat people with Covid-19 has drawn international attention. But this isn’t the first time the oxygen supply has been broken. Year after year, India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh sees outbreaks of Japanese encephalitis among children, a disease spread by the bite of a mosquito. In 2017, 30 children died suddenly at a hospital, likely due to a disruption in oxygen supply, though that could not be conclusively proven. It is, however, a reminder of what is happening in hospitals across India that have been running out of high-flow oxygen, resulting in deaths.

With little or no demand for improvement in health care from the middle class and elites, India’s public health system has taken a big hit over the years. Covid-19 has strained it to the breaking point and beyond, driving people from villages and smaller cities into bigger urban centers that are already unable to manage the surge of patients.

In the heat of the moment, it is easy to blame the Modi government for India’s feeble response to the Covid-19 surge. But bringing lasting change will require a long hard look at the planning and neglect of the past 74 years in independent India — both by India’s ruling classes and the media.

Kalpana Jain is a senior editor for ethics and religion at The Conversation U.S., a former reporter for the Times of India, a former Nieman Global Health Reporting Fellow, and author of “Positive Lives: The Story of Ashok and others living with HIV” (Penguin Global, 2003).

via Wealth Health

[ptshekradixit]

Pt. Shekhar Dikshit is President of Rashtriya Kisan Manch and famous Indian Youth brahmin Farmer Leader in Lucknow - Uttar Pradesh. social activist, Leader of Kisan Union, Former President of Kisan Manch